Happily Ever After
by Black Goddess
Summary: Giles reflects on Buffy and Billy Fordham. Spoilers for The Gift and Lie to Me. Angst


Happily ever after   
By the Black Goddess   
  
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or anything connected to it. I'm just borrowing the characters, no copyright infringement is intended. I make no money from this.   
Does not do what it says on the tin! This is angst, not fluff. Spoilers for The Gift (season 5) and Lie to Me (season 2) Title taken from Lie to Me.   
  
Set at the end of Season 5, after the Gift.   
  
Giles's POV   
  
Knowing this day would come did not prepare me for it. When I first met Buffy I knew that all I could do was prolong her life, a sudden, violent death was her fate. The day was delayed longer than I had dared to hope. Buffy served for five years as a Slayer, surviving longer than most, but in the end, her time was up. A lesser Slayer, a lesser person, would have been unable to face the final challenge, but not Buffy. She refused to kill Dawn or Ben, the easy solutions, and opted to fight Glory, trying to stop the ritual beginning. And Buffy was smart enough to know what she had to do and to do it. Her sacrifice saved the world and her sister.   
  
I remember once, more than four years ago now, Buffy and I stood in the graveyard waiting for an old friend of hers to rise from the dead and discussing life. She wanted to know if it ever got easier. She was asking for reassurance, that confident, poised, self-reliant young girl, and I provided it.   
"It's terribly simple. The bad guys are easily distinguishable by their pointy horns or black hats and we always defeat them and save the day. No-one ever dies and everybody lives happily ever after."   
"Liar." she said resignedly, knowing that all I had said was what she had told me to say, what she had wanted to hear, yet knowing that she could never think that was true. She looked like a child, small and innocent, but she had seen the darkness that lurks around the edges of humanity and she could never accept that childish belief again, even for a minute.   
  
My words mock me now. I have travelled a long way since I said those words, through death and disaster, apocalypse after apocalypse, murder and mayhem, and I have been changed. Seeing the unimaginable hardens you to it, and I have committed the final sin. I cannot know that it was the right choice. Maybe there was no way that Glory could have harmed us again, but the risk could not be taken. Another Slayer, a lesser Slayer, might have killed Ben herself, to save the world from the evils of what Glory might have done in the future. But my Buffy is not a killer. She fights for the innocent and the weak, for those who cannot fight for themselves, and Ben is one of those.   
  
Did I kill him in revenge? I knew that the ritual had begun. I knew that up on that tower great things were happening, and if either Buffy or Dawn came down alive, they could never be the same. Did I suffocate Ben, feel him struggle to breathe, straining and panting for air under my hand to avenge Buffy? I like to think I had right on my side, that the mayhem Glory would have wreaked in the future justified the death of an innocent, just one man to save thousands. I know many would agree 'the few should suffer for the sake of the many.' and all that sort of thing, but I'm no longer sure. His death is not on their conscience after all. It's on mine.   
His blood is on my hands. I am a murderer. I will go on, but he will not. And I will never be the same. There are things in my past that I am not proud of, black magic, dabbling in the occult and so on, but I have never intentionally killed anyone. It brings me no joy. He is dead and Buffy is dead, but I go on.   
  
His eyes haunt me, much as I imagine Jenny Calendar's face haunts Angel. I tricked him you see. You wouldn't think to look at me that I would be capable of killing in cold blood. I look terribly English, terribly middle-class, terribly respectable. I told him that Buffy would never kill him. I could see the relief in his eyes, hear it in his voice. He thought that I would help him, that I would let him go. I did, but not in the way he had thought. I stared into his eyes as he died, trying then for my absolution. I knew I could make no other choice. Just as there was no way Buffy could chose to do this, there was no way I could chose not to. I like to think that as he died I saw a flicker of acceptance in those chocolate brown eyes of his, a sign that he knew why I had to do this and he understood. I like to think he didn't hate me.   
But I will still fight, whatever he thought as he died, whatever my reasons were. Buffy is dead, a hard life allowed to come to an end at last. In the final days, Buffy accepted the inevitable. She had to confront choices that very few ever have to make in our 'civilised' Western world and the burden she carried grew greater with every year that passed, with every vampire she slew and every person she couldn't save. She had accepted that she could never have a life like everyone else had and had stopped trying, devoting everything to stopping Glory and saving her sister. And she succeeded. She has her reward. I have buried many people as a Watcher, as I told Buffy once, and I have come to believe that death is the final reward for a hard, cruel life spent making impossible choices and giving up everything to fight for justice. Buffy is at peace. This life cannot torture her any more. She shouldered her burden willingly, taking more than her share of pain and fear to spare us. She fought for us, and we should not mourn her or wish her back to suffer again. I have let her go, but I will never forget her. I will continue the fight she fought until the end as bravely as I can for as long as I can.   
But I will never forget the sight of her body crumpled on the ground, Spike's heart-broken sobs tearing in my ears.   
  
And Ben's eyes will haunt me for ever.   
  
  
The End   
  
Please REVIEW! None of my Buffy stuff ever gets reviews! 


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